Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Next chapter is up...

Chapter 38

It was strange waking up back in the dormitory of Gryffindor Tower. Harry had had to blink and rub his eyes before he remembered he was not in the Room of Requirement and that was why the hangings were red and gold, rather than silver and blue.

He dressed as quickly as he could, then gathered his things and went to wait downstairs for Neville. It was best to avoid the tension between Seamus and Ron. The two had been whispering all evening through the feast, but eventually it had broken down into an awkward silence between the two of them. Harry was fairly sure that they hadn't been talking about quidditch this time.

Neville had made a scruffy, half-asleep appearance a few minutes later, arriving with half his books in his arms rather than in his bag.

'Seamus and Ron are arguing again,' he explained, borrowing the arm of Harry's chair to sort his things. 'They were having a heated discussion on the express, but they're just yelling now.'

'What about?' Seamus, Dean and Ron had been close last year.

'The Daily Prophet,' Neville shrugged. 'Seamus' mum agrees with the Ministry and Ron, being an insensitive idiot insulted her without realising. Seamus wasn't too happy with it and they've been arguing about whether Dumbledore's wrong or not every time they've spoken since.'

'At least it isn't about me,' Harry smiled wryly.

'They weren't too bothered about anything the Prophet said about you. Ron mentioned his mum being upset, but he didn't care what they were writing about you, said it as none of his business since you weren't friends anymore.'

'First intelligent thing he's done in a while,' Harry remarked.

'Second, actually,' Neville laughed. 'He believes Dumbledore, and by extension that you were put in the tournament by Voldemort, not hoodwinked by some dark wizard.'

'You said the name,' Harry noted.

'I gave Gran an awful shock,' his friend smiled, 'she was going on and on about how corrupt and useless the Ministry is and how there was no reason I could ever want to read anything in the Daily Prophet if it was basically promoting for You-Know-Who. I corrected the name and she stopped dead and renewed the subscription without a word.'

'She must have realised you knew what you wanted, Nev,' Harry replied, impressed. He'd heard enough about Neville's grandmother to know she was not a lady to be trifled with.

'I do know what I want,' Neville said quietly. 'I want to be strong, so nobody ever calls me a squib, or looks down on me again.'

'Should I say I told you so to Ron?' Harry joked, as the Weasley stormed through the common room wearing a thunderous expression.

'I wouldn't,' he warned, 'Ron's decided to just let things go, since he knows now it's at least partially his fault and that you aren't going to be friends with him, best not to cause trouble again.'

'I'm only joking, Nev,' Harry told him. 'It would be silly to create animosity between myself and someone whose fighting one of my battles for me.'

'Breakfast?' Neville responded hopefully, his books now in his bag.

'Definitely,' Harry agreed, 'we've got Snape with the Slytherins first thing again, I need a full stomach to cope.'

Neville looked more than a little nervous at the mention of his least favourite professor, but nodded despite it.

The groups of students seemed to sort of melt away before him as he walked down the staircase towards the Great Hall. Neville stuck by him, and some of the older Gryffindors and Ravenclaws seemed content to simply ignore him, but the vast majority of the younger years in every house scattered out of his path.

Harry had to bite back a laugh that would, no doubt, have leant credence to the rumours the Ministry was doing their best to spread.

At least it meant that they didn't have to put up with the chattering first years near them on the breakfast table.

'So where were you on the train this morning then?' Neville asked, helping himself to the toast rack.

A few of the more nervous Gryffindor first years darted past their spot near the doors, huddling together as they passed Harry. Clearly the rumour-mongering of Rita Skeeter was having more of an affect than he'd anticipated, but there wasn't much he could do about it, not yet, anyway.

'I came in my by myself,' Harry replied, 'didn't fancy sharing a compartment on the train with any of that lot, so I avoided everyone.' He gestured vaguely at the first years who were occasionally throwing glances his way.

Neville nodded, making the assumption Harry wanted him to.

'I'm impressed you managed to stay out of sight for the whole journey,' his friend smiled.

'I'd've ended up like this,' Harry pointed at the several metre gap around them at the table.

'Nobody wants to sit next to a dangerous murderer, Harry,' Neville remonstrated, waving a finger.

His joke was rather ruined by Hermione, who swung herself in next to Harry before he could finish speaking.

'What happened in the maze?' she demanded, not even reaching for any of the food.

'Why do you want to know?' Harry asked coolly, buying time to think. There were plenty of ways telling anyone anything could come back to haunt him, he'd rather keep his cards close to his chest.

'Viktor died in there,' she gasped, incredulous.

'So they told me,' Harry responded, more solemnly. He'd liked Krum, they hadn't been close, but he'd admired the Bulgarian.

'The Daily Prophet is keen to spread the suggestion that you were responsible,' Hermione pressed. It was clear she didn't believe it, she just hoped Harry would hate the accusations and want to clear his name enough to tell her what really happened.

Last year I would have.

This year was different. He had a plan.

'I'm not interested in what that paper says,' he shrugged nonchalantly. 'I didn't see Krum die,' he looked at Hermione seriously, 'I'll even swear an oath to that if you want.'

'No,' she looked distraught. 'I just need to know what happened. Dumbledore said Voldemort was responsible, the Ministry blamed Ludo Bagman, but neither of them could have possibly cast the curse themselves.'

'Have you tried asking Cedric Diggory?' Harry suggested. 'He's the only other champion who you can ask, but I don't know how much he'll remember. I stunned him when I came to investigate the screaming.'

'The screaming?' Hermione looked slightly pale.

'The Beauxbatons champion,' Harry replied calmly, as if the very idea of Fleur suffering didn't make his blood boil.

'Oh.' She looked quite relieved and Harry's wand hand twitched with anger.

'Ask Diggory,' he told her sharply. 'The Ministry is advised by Malfoy's father, and he's probably not the only supporter of Voldemort in their ranks either.' He cast a completely unnecessary glance at the distant pink figure of Professor Umbridge. Hermione followed his eyes, and he quickly looked away as if afraid of being caught, just the faintest suggestion of distrust.

So it begins.

'So how was your summer?' Harry raised an eyebrow at her, and she looked down, admonished. 'Sorry,' she muttered.

'It was surprisingly tolerable,' Harry smiled, there was no reason he couldn't be civil, he supposed. She might be useful later, most of the Gryffindor's listened to Hermione when she wanted to be heard.

'Your relatives?'

'Oh,' Harry grinned darkly, 'they weren't any trouble at all.'

They'd tried to be trouble. His uncle had dared to go rummaging through his things in search of his wand, earning himself some quality alone time with the asp, and Dudley had tried to hit him once. He hadn't tried it again, not after his dinner had turned into a small pool of maggots halfway through the meal. He'd refused to touch anything that looked remotely like chicken for almost a week afterwards. Harry suspected his transfiguration trick had done more for Dudley's diet than any number of grapefruit.

'That's good,' Hermione smiled uncertainly, then she caught sight of Diggory getting up to leave and was gone in moments.

Harry helped himself to more eggs.

'What did happen in the maze?' Neville asked, slightly nervous.

'You don't want to know, Nev,' Harry said quietly. 'I'd rather not talk about it either, sorry.'

His friend nodded understandingly, then took another bite of toast, carefully balancing slices of tomato along its edge.

'Potions,' he sighed after he finished eating the tomatoes that had fallen free.

'Potions,' Harry agreed. The Triwizard Tournament had had some upsides, and avoiding Snape's dreary dungeon was foremost among them.

He rushed down the last few forkfuls of eggs, gathered his bag from under the bench and followed Neville down. Snape had probably been saving every scrap of disdain from the last year until this lesson.

'Ah,' Snape murmured from the back of the dungeon once everyone had filed in. 'At last we have the privilege of Mr Potter's company again.'

He strode down the aisle between the desks, tutting softly.

'This June you will all be sitting an examination in which you will prove just how much you have learnt about the composition and used of magical potions. Some of you,' his eyes drifted past Neville to rest on Harry, 'have not spent all of the last four years as wisely as they could have done.'

He waved his wand at the board, casting a simple, wordless revealing charm to disclose the recipe of the revealing charm to the class.

The Draught of Peace.

'Partner up,' the potions professor drawled, 'and I suggest due diligence in the preparation of this particular potion, it requires a delicate touch.'

'Come on, Nev,' Harry began to arrange his things across the desk between them.

'You want to work with me?'

'Why would I choose anyone else?' Harry stared at him curiously.

'I'm terrible at potions,' Neville stated.

'You don't think well with Snape looming over you,' Harry corrected. 'There's no way he'll be able to pass up commenting on me, so if we're together that means I'll draw all his attention.'

Neville tentatively reached for the moonstone, but Harry caught his hand.

'Make sure everything happens exactly as it says on the board,' he warned, 'I don't think Snape was joking about due diligence.'

His friend gulped, but began to slowly add the powdered moonstone just as the instructions said to. The potion very slowly changed to a bright purple. It was a only a few shades beyond Uncle Vernon's most spectacular effort of facial colouration.

'Let it simmer,' Harry reminded him gently, when Neville's hand strayed towards the syrup of hellebore.

From his favourite shadowy spot at the back of the dungeon Snape was staring at the pair of them, an unreadable expression on his face.

Harry ignored him.

Across from them, Ron and Dean were frantically retreating from a violently sparking potion. The bowl of powdered moonstone was sinking, upside down, into the top of the cauldron.

'That will be zero, Weasley, Thomas,' Snape sneered, vanishing the contents. 'Apparently when I instructed you to be careful you thought yourself above listening.'

Their potion flared pink and Neville stopped moving in motionless surprise. He was staring at the potion in shock, glancing at the instructions and back at his cauldron.

Is he really so surprised that it's working?

He left Neville to keep things going, trusting him to add the syrup and leave it to simmer until it was ready. Snape had not been kind enough to provide powdered porcupine quills, which meant one of them had to carefully and meticulously grind the whole ones down to a very fine powder.

'Longbottom,' Snape remarked dispassionately, 'you've found yourself a new victim.'

'Add these, Nev,' Harry told his friend, passing him the the porcupine quills and stepping around in between him and Snape, supposedly so he could retrieve the powdered unicorn horn.

The potions master gave Harry a piercing stare, but turned on his heel and swept off to the front of the class.

Their potion did not reach the anticipated glimmering white that the instructions described. It came to a thin, ivory hued liquid that, when Harry or Neville forgot to stir and it grew too hot, would thicken just enough to let off the merest hint of a shimmer.

Around them the rest of the class had either long since given up, or continued to add more porcupine quills in the hope it might prompt their potions to shift somewhere further along the spectrum from yellow to white.

'We did ok,' Harry decided, finding only a few comparable brewings. Malfoy had reached a similar sort of state as they had, though his potion was slightly less white and more glowing than glimmering, and Hermione had somehow managed to achieve a potion that was glimmering perfectly, but remained an odd silvery-grey. It rather reminded Harry of Bertha Jorkins conjured hand.

'If you are…. finished,' Snape's eyes swept contemptuously across the class, pausing only to rest on the three pairs that had come close to the desired outcome, 'bring a flask of your potion to my desk.'

'I'll do it, Nev,' Harry volunteered, 'you start tidying up.'

He very carefully filled one of the flasks, it wasn't quite basilisk venom, but he didn't want to spill it on himself and find out the difference. Neville had managed to make even the most inert potions dangerous previously, and Harry wasn't taking any chances with his draught of peace.

Snape slid the flask firmly across the surface of his desk using the back of his hand, moving it to join a handful of others, among which Hermione's and Malfoy's could be counted.

'Remain behind, Potter,' he called out as Harry turned away, 'I need to make sure your latest year of glory hasn't dragged your grade down past its usual level of mediocrity.'

It wouldn't be potions without detention or points lost, Harry supposed.

The rest of the class, once Harry smiled at a lingering Neville to show him it was fine to leave, quickly escaped the dungeons and headed for the next lesson. Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Harry leant against the corner of the bench nearest Snape's desk and waited for the sallow-faced man to begin.

'Why did you partner with Longbottom?' Snape demanded silkily.

'He's my friend,' Harry responded calmly, wearing a blank mask.

'Well, despite your choice of potions partner your brew is marginally better than the only other two I shall spend my time grading.' Snape's tone had changed from its normal, disgusted drawl. It was almost neutral. 'It seems you might have a chance of continuing to learn from me after this year, so long as you keep Longbottom from destroying your work.'

'Perhaps, sir,' Harry ventured, 'you might consider not standing over him as he works, he does not need to be intimidated.' Snape's eyes flashed fire, but the professor did not respond to Harry's bold suggestion.

'I have kept you behind, Potter, to inform you that you need to be more careful. The headmaster believes that you will somehow be very important in the coming war against the Dark Lord. I have warned him that he shouldn't expect too much from a child, but he was adamant. The headmaster insisted I gently remind you that apparating around your house and vanishing every other day is not a good idea.'

How did he know? And why tell Snape?

'I will tell you,' Snape continued softly, ' that not only is it not a good idea to risk the justice of the Ministry, but it is a terrible idea to act so irresponsibly in the face of the Dark Lord's return.'

He stalked round his desk and pulled out a thin parcel, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

'Black sends his love,' the potions professor sneered, 'he'd have got himself killed sneaking out to see you if we hadn't promised him a way of communicating, so take this. It's an enchanted mirror, two-way, speak Black's first name to activate it and if he's near the mirror, which I'm sure will be at all times, then you'll get an answer.'

'Thank you, sir.' Harry ignored Snape's disdain and took some joy from the devotion his godfather had to him. He hadn't been able to write to Sirius, courtesy of the Fidelius charm that concealed him, and missed his godfather greatly over the summer.

'And, Potter,' Snape suddenly assumed his neutral demeanour again, 'next time you want to distract the Dark Lord it would be best not to do it by claiming to have killed his more useful servants.'

Harry's eyes snapped up to the dark orbs of his professor, emptying his thoughts as had become habit upon making eye contact with the wizards, and turning his forearm ever so slightly, just in case.

'We both know that you lied to the Dark Lord, but he seems to believe you, despite any advice to the contrary.' Snape swooped round the desk to grab Harry's wrist, his fingers pressing painfully into the underside of his arm. 'Do you understand, Potter? He is taking you seriously now.'

'He wasn't before?' Harry asked, half-serious, half-joking.

'Get out, Potter,' Snape hissed, but none of his usual contempt accompanied his anger.

Harry happily complied. It was defence after double potions, and he was quite looking forward to seeing just what their new professor would be up to this year. He needed to remain out of sight, so he could continue to learn from Salazar and discover what the prophecy said about him, which meant that the Ministry, Dumbledore and Riddle's sycophants all needed to focus on each other instead of him. It wouldn't be easy to do that given the Ministry seemed utterly unwilling to accept the version of events Dumbledore had related to them. This new, horribly pink, teacher was his opportunity to get a glimpse of what the Ministry really thought.

He was, courtesy of Snape, already late, so he doubted he would be getting on the teacher's good side, but she was from the Ministry, so he hadn't really stood much of a chance to begin with.

The squat, pink-draped woman was lecturing the class on the syllabus for the year when he walked in and apologised for being late.

She didn't take it well.

'Mr Potter,' she simpered. 'Why are you late?'

'Professor Snape wished to speak with me,' Harry answered politely, closing the door quietly behind him.

'You have a note?'

'Sadly the professor neglected to burden me with one.' He smiled disarmingly and took a seat at the back beside Neville, as far from the former official as possible.

'That will be ten points from Gryffindor for lying, Potter,' she announced in her high, girlish voice. 'Lying is a terrible habit to get into.'

Harry suppressed a wry smile. Ten points was not a bad price for learning how Professor Umbridge would be trying to deal with him.

As I was saying before Mr Potter started creating stories, your education in this subject has been unacceptably broken up. A new teacher every year, all very poor choices, and jumping all over the curriculum, with no regard to what the Ministry knows you need to understand.' She tutted to herself, then pulled a short, thick wand from her handbag and gave it sharp flick. The stack of books on her desk rose and deposited themselves before every member of the class.

Defensive Magical Theory.

A cursory flick was enough to tell Harry that any students who couldn't get additional help from others were going to fail their OWLs.

It was, while completely useless, a fascinating book. The pictures and instructions reminded him of the emergency procedure cards and demonstrations on planes, and the absurd lack of any practical magic in the only class Hogwarts taught that covered offensive magic was very interesting. Has someone convinced Fudge that we might rise up to overthrow him?

'I have a question,' Hermione, like several of the class, had opened the book to scan its contents.

'Is it about the book, Miss…?' Umbridge queried, adjusting her lurid, pink cardigan.

'Granger,' Hermione responded, 'and not entirely.'

'Well, if it isn't about the book, perhaps you can wait to see me at the end.' The suggestion was sugar sweet.

'My question is about the aim of the course,' Hermione continued, staring hard at the squat professor. 'It's our OWL year, Professor Umbridge, and I'm not convinced this book is sufficient to enable us to pass.'

At least she was intelligent enough not to directly challenge her in her own classroom.

'The Ministry has consulted the opinions of several very experienced witches and wizards, Miss Granger, there is no need for concern. I can assure all of you that this will be completely unlike previous years where you have been exposed to some very dangerous creatures.' Harry had the feeling she wasn't referring to Grindylows and Boggarts. A small plume of anger rose at her bigotry towards Professor Lupin, his only good teacher in three years.

'There's no mention of using magic,' Dean called out, confused and more than a little horrified. Nobody wanted their favourite, most practical lesson, to transition into another repetition of theory.

'Please raise your hand if you wish to speak…' she trailed off, not knowing the muggle-born's name.

'Dean Thomas,' he replied stiffly.

'Why on earth, Mr Thomas, do you think you will need to use dark or dangerous spells in a classroom?' Umbridge tittered. 'It's quite ridiculous.'

'How else are we going to be prepared for what's out there?' Ron demanded.

'Raise your hand, Mr Weasley,' Umbridge snapped, her unnatural girlish demeanour vanishing for an instant.

She recognises the pure-bloods, then, Harry noted quietly.

Professor Umbridge was quickly making herself unpopular with his classmates, and she was revealing more of herself than she should. An obvious advocate of pure-blood supremacy and, if his assumption was correct, none too fond of werewolves either. Harry leant back in his chair and watched, hoping to see more.

'There is nothing out there,' she simpered. 'The Ministry is merely concerned for the safety of the children of our society.'

'Then they should teach them defensive magic and let them practice it,' Ron burst out, 'or You-Know-Who is going to wander across this country killing who he bloody wants.'

'Ten points from Gryffindor,' Umbridge breathed furiously. 'I will not tolerate such language or such lies in my classroom. The rumour and fear-mongering of a few questionable individuals is not to be listened to. The Ministry clearly stated the truth of events.'

Every eye in the classroom turned to him.

'I agree,' Harry shrugged, suppressing a grin. 'You shouldn't swear in class, and listening to baseless rumours is ill-advisable.' Professor Umbridge's surprised expression was worth the betrayed looks of his fellow students. 'It's obvious that to dismiss the rumours we simply need to find evidence that they aren't true. I'm sure the Ministry are doing their utmost to discredit them,' he finished innocently.

Hermione understood what he was saying straight away, and a ripple of realisation slowly crossed the classroom. It was the first step to ensuring nobody believed anything the Daily Prophet wrote about him. Professor Umbridge was only going to become more unpopular and by associating the rumours written about him with her, Harry would render them toothless.

Umbridge herself could only fix her simpering smile more firmly on her face and pretend that Harry was agreeing with her.

'Turn to the first chapter of your books, please,' the Pink Professor, as Harry had now mentally dubbed her, instructed.

There was a reluctant rustle of paper. Harry picked a point about midway through the first chapter and ran his hand along the spine to keep the book open there. He still needed a way of practising his abilities with the mind arts. The library had no books on the subject, though a few mentioned it briefly in passing, and none of his research had turned up anything remotely useful.

I'll have to ask Salazar, he realised.

The painting would probably be able to offer something useful, perhaps the founder knew how Riddle had mastered it.

Harry couldn't wait to get started, passive legilimency would be an incredible advantage for him, especially if the mind arts were as obscure as Slytherin seemed to believe.

He turned a few pages further, just in case Umbridge was watching, and pushed his wand up the inside of his sleeve, catching it when it fell. The small surges of warmth he got from touching it were a pleasant distraction from the verbose, uninspired meanderings of Wilbert Slinkhard.

Out of the corner of his eye he watched Ron, Dean and Hermione muttering subtly between themselves while the Pink Professor watched them maliciously. Harry would not be first in the line of fire, it seemed.

'There's no way I'm going to pass this class' OWL exam now,' Neville fretted in a panicked whisper.

'You aren't going to learn anything useful in here, no.' Harry agreed. 'But I promised to help you, didn't I?'

'You'll help me pass?' Neville abandoned his book to stare, and Harry pointedly tapped its pages until he returned to his pretense.

'Of course I will,' Harry assured him.

'Nobody else would ever do that for me,' Neville murmured gratefully. Harry nodded, stifling the uncomfortable feeling welling up within him.

Why couldn't he have expressed his gratitude in a manner less like Bertha Jorkins?

A brief image danced before his eyes. The curly-haired witch laughing hysterically as she died, killed by a transfigured butterfly. Bertha Jorkins had been seduced, used and abandoned by her uncaring master.

Is that what I'm doing to Neville?

Harry hoped not. He liked Neville, understood the shy Gryffindor and what had made him how he was. He would never abandon him, not how he had been left by those he had thoughts friends last year.

I care about him, Harry decided, refusing to agonise over it. That's the difference.

He turned back to the pages of Umbridge's textbook, flipping through the last few to the end of the chapter.

'We can go up to the Room of Requirement again, Nev,' he muttered. 'We need to find a copy of the curriculum first, though. I learnt lots of practical spells, but I don't know everything about dark creatures and the like.'

'I'll ask Hermione,' Neville responded, then they were both forced to pretend to read in earnest as Umbridge stood up from the front, gaining enough height to see all the way to the back.

Harry returned to thinking about his brief experiences of legilimency. The sphinx had left no impression but pain, and Harry suspected that was because it had managed to see everything it wanted in an instant. Voldemort, however, had jumped through a list of his memories, some of Harry's worst ones, and even shared a few of his own, though Harry was not sure if it had been by accident or design.

The only deduction Harry had made was the moments had all been linked by a common feeling or state of mind and Riddle had somehow followed that, but it only meant he really needed to go to the Chamber of Secrets and speak to Salazar's portrait again.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone that has!